Don't Pass Up Serendipitous Opportunities!

I think, as writers, we have to be open to anything. You can plan all you want, but don’t expect your career to follow a predictable path.

Five years ago I decided to follow my muse and write children’s books—picture books, poetry, chapter books, middle-grade—all varieties, but all for children.

But you never know where your writing will take you.

To illustrate, let me take you back to April of last year. My middle-grade novel had made the rounds of publishers and struck out.

I was reading the in my favorite local online daily, Albany Patch. Not because I have a penchant for violence or larceny, but having previously lived in Richmond, I found it refreshing to read what passed for crime in Albany. For instance, this was an item on April 11:

5:42 p.m. A woman came into the police department to see if a police officer could speak to her 5-year-old daughter “as a reminder” about “Not good behavior.”

My first thought was, really? Scared straight in kindergarten? I reprinted parts of the police blotter on my blog, For Words, and it became a semi-regular feature.

One day Emilie Raguso, editor of Albany Patch and apparently a regular reader of my blog, asked if I would consider becoming one of Patch’s “local voices.”

Why not? Among the pieces she encouraged me to submit were my musings on Albany’s crime blotter, which I was happy to do. One week in January the police log was particularly crazy, and a Patch reader wrote in: “I hope Tanya Grove does her commentary on this one!” Someone was requesting me by name! Well, I couldn’t let her down, so I obliged.

A week later I attended , organized to show her how much we support her efforts to bring the community together through her great outreach and hard work at Albany Patch. It was a convivial gathering of staff and regular contributors, and it ended up being a double celebration because Albany Patch had just received a much-deserved award, Best of the West. People were introducing themselves to each other, taking pictures, and congratulating Emilie.

Amid all this, approaches me and asks if I’d be interested in speaking at her club’s luncheon. I point to my name tag and introduce myself, gently explaining that she must have mistaken me for someone else. (I've heard there is another Tanya Grove who, at least at one point, lived in Berkeley, and for all I know, she’s a popular speaker on any number of interesting topics.)

“The one who writes the ?” she confirms.

I nod again and ask, “But why me?”

Now someone better versed at self-promotion might have whipped out a business card and maybe even negotiated some perks. But, my mouth agape, I was still recovering from the shock that, on the basis of some silly blogs I posted, someone was inviting me to speak at the . 

But no, Sylvia insisted it was me that she was inviting. Because we were at an Albany Patch event at the time—one that —I wasn’t terribly shocked when she said she read my comments on the Albany police blotter, but it did seem a crooked path to the speaking circuit.

Then she explained that she was always looking for someone humorous to speak. I probably should have politely declined then and there because there’s nothing so ripe with pressure as having to be funny in front of a large group of people you’ve never met. 

It reminds me of a family story in which my sister-in-law, as a teenager, had been dating a new boy, and in that early stage had bragged to her parents just how funny he was. When the day came that my father-in-law was introduced to this boyfriend, his opening line was: “Say something funny.”  

Of course nobody could be funny in that situation. Humor requires context—it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Ask my dog—he’s absolutely terrified of the vacuum cleaner and sees no humor in it whatsoever.

But I digress. The point is I could have given up writing—having been so cruelly rejected by the book publishing industry—but I soldiered on. I may not have won a Newbury award, but my blog led me to writing for Albany Patch, which, in turn got me a speaking gig.

So you may have notions about how your writing career will go, but never rule out the possibility that someone out of the blue will ask you to speak to a crowd of assembled strangers. Don’t pass up that opportunity! It may lead to something else.

I’ll let you know…

For more of Tanya's thoughts on books and just about anything else, read For Words @ tanyagrove.wordpress.com.